Johan Ackermann was left lamenting Gloucester’s basic errors after their Heineken Champions Cup defeat at home to Munster.

A 41-15 defeat ended his side’s hopes of reaching the quarter-finals in their first season back in Europe’s top competition.

The differences between the sides

Highlighting the biggest differences between the sides, Gloucester head coach Ackermann said: “I think probably the aerial contests and the lineouts.

“We actually had good lineouts but it was just timing and little things that went wrong and the biggest thing was the defence.

“The stats said we were at the same level of percentage of carries and everything, but it’s how strong they were physically in that defence.

Munster's Tadgh Beirne wins a high ball (Image: PA)

“We had to work very hard. We gave them easy momentum so we need to up that part - the physicality of the defence - but even when we attack they were very basic and direct but it worked for them on a lot of occasions and then they saw the kick space behind and that is something we can look at to exploit more.”

Did Munster have an advantage by having fresher players?

Gloucester’s lengthy injury list is also not helping, while in stark contrast Munster were able to bring in fresh international quality as they are owned by the IRFU, who prefer to limit their game time in the Pro14 to save them for Europe and the Six Nations.

“It’s going to differ every year, if we were lucky that we only had three or four injuries we wouldn’t have spoken about it but that is a reality at the moment to play three Premiership games and before that two European games plus another two European games after that you need your best possible team,” said Ackermann.

“I still believe the 23 out there was good enough to win if we played better or made less errors, less mistakes.

Video Loading

Video Unavailable

Click to playTap to play

The video will start in 8Cancel

Play now

“And it was mistakes, it was not where they came and played so good that we couldn’t handle that.

“It was basic tackles, basic errors we made in our attack.

“Where they were outstanding was in their physicality and every opportunity they got when they made a mistake they punished us.”

He added: "Were we 40 points worse than them? I don’t think so if you look at the first 20 minutes, it was our mistake that caused them to come in our half but to be fair if they had the luxury to rest players last week, I think they had seven changes from last week to this week, bringing in Conor Murray and those kind of players nice and fresh, it would have been nice if we had seven or eight players rested last week, you know our front row or maybe our back row but we can’t, that’s what we’ve got.”

Conor Murray of Munster kicks the ball clear (Image: Getty Images)

“There’s a whole back row and a whole front row out with injury and the list goes on so we just have to deal with what we’ve got.

“But again, I don’t want to use the excuse, I still think we had the quality.

“Would we have beaten them? I don’t know but the reality is if you take out five lineouts that we’d win on any other day, you take out the high balls we missed etcetera, we probably could’ve been much closer.

“I don’t want to take anything away from Munster. They were so clinical. So basic but clinical and that’s what we need to get to.

“I think we were our worst enemy and they were good when they had the ball.”

Ackermann's big concern

Gloucester have now lost three games in a row in all competitions for the first time this season and have suffered three straight defeats at Kingsholm.

“It’s not nice, especially at home,” said Ackermann.

“Yes, it’s good sides. Exeter are a good side and Munster. Sale were a quality side but disappointing in the fact that we had a lot to play for.

“For me the biggest concern is we speak a lot off the field and we know where things go wrong but it’s time for us to fix them on the field.

“We all can win a lineout ball – the lineouts up until three weeks ago, we were one of the leading sides in the Premiership, suddenly now it’s the small little mistakes.

“I hope it’s the bump in the road that we had last season and I hope at the end of this block there’s a bit of time, free time to regenerate players, there will be players coming back and we’ll just keep working on things but hopefully this is our bad part of the season and we’ll pick it up from there.”

How will Ackermann approach Castres game?

With Gloucester having nothing to play for heading into their final pool game away to Castres, Ackermann is considering making a lot of changes to his side.

“My head at the moment is on rotating players, I think we need that obviously where the squad allows it,” he said.

“I think it’s fair to give players opportunities who have been quite patient to have an opportunity and give them a crack at playing in this competition.”

Ackermann also confirmed that Danny Cipriani got through his comeback game from injury with no major alarm.